Offices Held

Biography

John Ashburnham came of a family which had been settled in the parish of that name since at least the 12th century. On his father’s death he became heir apparent to his grandfather William, who by his own will of 29 May 1530 provided for the grandson’s succession to Ashburnham at the age of 22 if he married with the consent of the executors, his aunt Jane, her husband Richard Covert and their kinsman Walter Hendley. Since the marriage with Isabel Sackville, then aged five, had already been projected Ashburnham presumably did not have to wait until he was 27, the alternative time laid down by his grandfather, and it had probably taken place by 1546, when John Sackville and his son Richard Sackville II granted the rectory and advowson of Laughton, Sussex, to Ashburnham and another Sackville son-in-law, Nicholas Pelham. William Ashburnham also stipulated that the profits from his other lands were to accumulate in a chest at Battle abbey until the heir came of age, and asked George, 5th Baron Bergavenny and his brothers Sir Thomas and Sir Edward Neville to act as supervisors ‘for that these poor innocents [Ashburnham had three sisters] be of their blood’, Lora Berkeley being the daughter of a Neville.